One man\’s year-long journey through the world of baseball

I don’t know how I missed this for so long, but Seattle Mariners’ pitcher Miguel Batista, a native of the Dominican Republic, has a blog up at ESPNDeportes. The most recent article is a fun report on teammate Ichiro’s clubhouse demeanor called “the Samurai Hitter.”

A rough translation of the first two paragraphs :

There are a lot of things you normally see in a major league clubhouse, like listening to rap or heavy metal, players saying the most horrible things to each other, seeing a group of players dancing, bobbing their heads up and down to the rhythm, or making rookies dress up like women.

But of one thing I am positive. You don’t often see a Japanese player pass by you in stride and say to you in perfect Spanish, “Dimelo Caballete!”

Batista may not be a star, but he seems like a funny guy. I’ll be reading this semi-regularly for sure.

About

I’m currently working on a year-long research project on the globalization of baseball, courtesy of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. Over the next 12 months, my project will take me to the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Australia, Puerto Rico, Okinawa, and Venezuela, and I decided to set up this blog to share some of the things I pick up along the way.